Google wants game developers to delve into its browser-based Chrome OS badly enough that it's handing out free Cr-48 laptops to prove it.

Apparently Google's been handing out cards to developers attending its sessions at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. After attending the sessions, developers were able to redeem the cards for Cr-48 laptops.

Why Cr-48? Cr, the scientific abbreviation for chromium, is actually 24th on the periodic table. Cr-48 is rather an isotope of chromium--a highly unstable version, in fact--thus Cr-48, Google's "beta" test of a Chrome OS device.

According to Information Week, during one of the sessions, Google software engineer Vincent Scheib highlighted the sorry state of affairs for online web-based gaming, pointing out deficiencies in current models. You know, like the fact that browsers can't even differentiate between the mouse input sent to operate a browser, and the sort first-person games need to translate to allow you to look around (in a 3D environment) in any direction.